This is part of a series on social democracy.
Earlier entry: http://www.dailykos.com/...
Later entries: http://www.dailykos.com/...
http://www.dailykos.com/...
By around 1970 the American economy had become so rich that some people began speculating about what is now known as a post scarcity economy. You had articles wondering what Americans would do with increasing leisure time.
Is our country now too poor to think about such things these days? If our country was really poorer than it has been in the past, then maybe we would have to cut back on many things, both public and private, because there are not enough resources to support everything we want. But is the country really too poor for social democracy?
Wealth should be measured by goods and services. Our GDP is as great as it ever has been, far greater than when Social Security and Medicare were adopted. The productivity of workers is higher than ever. Our capacity to produce goods and services is as great or greater than it ever has been. We should feel as wealthy as we ever have been.
Instead, we are told that we no longer can afford many of the things we have had in the past. Pensions, education, retirement and medical care are now luxuries that have to be given up by many or most people.
The country, in terms of the actual wealth it can produce, is as rich as its ever been. Why do so many feel we cannot afford social democratic programs we have had for decades?
Of course, the obvious answer is that the wealth has been concentrated in a smaller group by sharply rising inequality. This smaller group is not willing to pay for public goods, even though the need for public goods is greater than ever as most people's incomes go down.
The problem we have is not a wealth problem, but a problem with the flow of money. The cart has been put before the horse. Money is not wealth, it is a tool to distribute resources in an economy more complicated that simple barter. Creating wealth (actual goods and services) should lead to money used to exchange the different kinds of goods and services that people need. Instead, what we have now is money is used to seize control of wealth, often referred to as rent seeking. The financial industry controls the economy because it controls the flow of money, skimming off money as fast as it can regardless of the consequences for the real wealth of society.
The worse thing is that politicians and most influential people are oblivious to this. They think that money is wealth and the economy is money. For some reason they cannot think about cars or houses or computers except in terms of the money involved. They need to think about the problem this way: How can society make and distribute houses, computers, medical care, etc. to the people?
The answer is to create an economy that includes some concept of social democracy. I don't think we know all the answers for creating a long term sustainable one right now, and maybe we should think of a better name for it. But the alternative is oligarchy and corporate feudalism with a great mass of people struggling to get by.